


Reconcile

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Wings, Amputation, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Wingfic, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 22:05:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16585100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Without his wings, strong and heavy behind him, he may as well not have a face.





	Reconcile

**Author's Note:**

> This follows the events of Mr-Finch's 'Hanging On', which should be read first for best comprehension.

Frank Castle was a well built man, mid-forties. He was Caucasian, but tanned neatly from plenty of time spent outdoors. His flesh was rippled and pocked with scars, marred in a way that told anyone who knew how to look the exact kind of violence he’d spent his life engaged in. His nose had been broken seven separate times. His eyes were brown, his lips, thick and bowed.

These were surface facts. Unshakable. Objective. They were what they were, and meant nothing about _who_ Frank was.

Another: Frank Castle had the wings of a hooded crow. They were unique enough to stand out among the many corvids that walked the streets of NYC, but mundane enough to allow him to blend into most generalized crowds. They were broad and strong, his wings, blunt-tipped and thick feathered, the sort of wings a man could learn to fight with. They had been as scarred as the rest of him.

Frank Castle had the wings of a hooded crow.

Frank Castle had _wings_.

Sitting now in front of the mirror, taking stark stock of himself, he wonders if he can still think of himself in terms of being the same man. Without his wings, strong and heavy behind him, he may as well not have a face.

The way people flinched and stared, then glanced quickly away; the way people avoided brushing fingers when he handed over money, as if his condition were catching -- the way people treat him now, like he needs to be _handled_ and then shooed on, you might think he really didn’t have a face.

Frank wonders if there’s a magic world where human evolution had made some wrong turn, where humans had lost their wings, or never had them. He wonders if in such a world he’d be able to get by, to hide the scars and walk unseen.

Devengiration wasn’t unheard of. It had to be done sometimes, if a person was sick or injured enough. Some people were born with the deformity; the same as being born missing any other limb. It was rare, but it happened. And of course, wings could be traumatized.

Amputation saved lives, when done properly.

Punitive amputation was still practiced in some countries. Malaysia. Yemen, Saudi Arabia. Ghana and Uganda. More, Frank was sure. Those were just the ones he remembered reading about on the wiki page he’d found. The point was, in some places around the world, there were crimes a person could commit that would cost them their wings. Most countries saw it as a kind of torture, and Frank supposed they were right.

He dreams about it, sometimes. Rawlins' hands on his wings. That had been torture enough -- a man like Rawlins, presuming to touch a part of him so personal. He’d known how to make Frank suffer, because that was what Rawlins was good at. All men had their talents; making others suffer was Rawlins’.

So Rawlins had started with a tender touch. Every pass of his combing, questing fingers through Frank’s feathers had been weighted with the possibility, the promise, that pain could come. Frank expected twisted feathers, expected fistfuls of his plumage ripped away. Pain. But Rawlins had been gentle at first. Rawlins had _preened_ him.

“This is what you like, isn’t it Frank? See, I remember you in that tent. Sitting there letting good old Billy work you over. How much you trusted him.”

And Bill, standing there by the computers, watching. Seething in that quiet way he had, but not because of what was happening to the man he’d called friend, the man who had welcomed him as a brother -- not on behalf of Frank, his old preening partner; no, Billy was seething with quiet rage at the slights, however subtle, Rawlins made against him. The reminders that Rawlins saw him as no more than another dog on a leash.

Yeah, Frank dreams about that too.

On a good night, the dreams carry him into the pain, the agony of breaking bone and tearing flesh, of Rawlins cutting him apart like a prize. On a good night, Frank wakes in agony, the memory of the pain so fresh it’s real and present again.

Bad nights, he can feel the weight of hands moving through feathers he no longer had, gentle as a lover, an invasion so intimate he wanted to scream at the memory.

Sitting here and looking at himself, taking stock and passing no judgment, sparing himself no undue kindness, he wonders if he can really ever harmonize this image with his own mental picture of himself. He’s accepted every other injury, every other mark upon him.

Why is this so very different? How is this loss any different than his broken nose, than the scars that break across his skin?

Why does he close his eyes and see himself before the mirror, wings full and proper behind him, and why does the sight, upon opening his eyes, of this new reality, cause his heart to stutter and skip every time?

He breathes in sharply through his nose, forcing himself to settle. David waits patiently through this assessment every day, he says nothing, observing Frank in the same distant, assessing way he had watched Frank in that basement after every fight. David is good at watching, at waiting, and there was a time when Frank could only acknowledge that part of David with scorn.

A man who took no action could hardly complain when the world acted against him.

But Frank appreciates this tendency of David’s to watch him now. He feels like it’s a sign of how deeply David cares that he is willing to bear witness to Frank’s state. Madani was the only other person who would look at him without flinching, and that was different.

Madani refused to flinch because she was iron and steel, because she had seen worse, because it was a point of pride. She didn’t flinch because she felt for him a grudging respect and would not show him the kind of thoughtless impoliteness that would come from acknowledging his loss in any way. She didn’t flinch because she couldn’t comprehend what he had lost and knew better than to pretend that she did.

David didn’t flinch because all he saw, no matter how bloody or disfigured, was Frank.

Frank doesn’t understand that. He doesn’t understand how David can look at him now, broken down this way, and still see the man who had stood before him, wings spread, while he laughed in some kind of relief, like Frank’s appearance in his little hideout was the best development of the day, before Frank knocked him out.

How does David look at him and see the man who had nearly died in the woods of Kentucky, who had taken an arrow to the chest from a man he called friend, who’d had to be carried out, his heavy wings dragging along behind David as he struggled back to the van with him? How does he see the man who kissed his wife? The man who put a knife to his son’s throat?

How does David reconcile these past images of Frank with the diminished, walking wound that sits here now?

Because Frank can’t. He’s given himself time, he’s given himself opportunity. And he just can’t.

Frank Castle had the wings of a hooded crow.

They had suited him. They had, even after so many injuries, never failed him. A strong and sturdy part of himself, losing them meant relearning balance, relearning how to walk, to put his weight on his feet. It meant he had to relearn how to hold himself in a fight, how to duck and weave and dodge; how to parry and how to throw a weighted punch. There was no more strength at his back, no more beating his wings to give an extra surge of power to a blow, no more twisting in air, wings snapping out to accommodate so he could aim on the fly.

Everything was different.

When he nods, the motion subtle and slight, David steps in. David doesn’t hesitate, because that would only drive home the loss, the discomfort; David touches him like he’s whole, or like he’s always been this way. David touches him like they’ve always done this.

David preens him, or what’s left of him, like Frank could be doing it himself, like it matters that he’s being allowed to do this.

It’s utterly different than what Rawlins had done to him. There is no underlying threat in David’s careful, gentle motions. David never touches without permission, and Frank welcomes his proximity. No, it is _nothing_ like what Rawlins did to him.

And it’s not like back in those desert tents, before learning loss, before learning betrayal; it’s not like sitting cross-legged on a hard cot and feeling Billy gentle him after a particularly close call. It’s not like Bill’s wandering hands and meandering attention. Billy had been the only one Frank had trusted to tend to him when he’d injured his left wing, crushing it so badly that he’d never been able to hold it out quite straight again afterwards. He remembers those hands, rough and sure. David’s are not like them.

Nor are they like Maria’s. Maria had preened him after every nightmare he let her notice, and some he thought he’d hidden. Maria had been thorough and insistent, each movement calculated to remind him that he was not alone, that he was home, that he was loved. That danger was far away, and if it came near, she would face it with him, because she was brave enough to love him, and brave enough not to let anyone scare her from him.

David preens him like it’s an honor. David preens him like he’s still someone strong and precious, like he’s somehow earned the care. David, in his way, loves him, and it shows despite their inability to verbalize it. David touches him him like he’s sending his own message, and so in that way, that one painful way, he is like Maria -- but David’s message is simpler. “You survived,” David’s hands say. “Thank you for that,” they say.

 _Thank you, thank you, thank you_.

Frank watches David in the mirror, the way he focuses on his task and how he does it, as he does everything, with the intent of perfection. He wonders when he managed to reconcile this side of David with the man who had gagged at the sight of a little spilled blood. When he accepted that this spook, with his tired, obscene eyes and his eternal dishevelment, was as strong and as true as any man Frank had ever served beside.

He wonders, watching David move, if he can let it sneak up on him the same way, this reconciliation of Frank Castle, he of the broken nose and the broad, heavy hooded crow wings, with the man sitting before him, faceless, wingless.


End file.
